Personal computers and business computers are continually attacked by trojans, spyware, and adware, collectively referred to as “malware” or “pestware.” These types of programs generally act to gather information about a person or organization—often without the person or organization's knowledge. Some pestware is highly malicious. Other pestware is non-malicious but may cause issues with privacy or system performance. And yet other pestware is actual beneficial or wanted by the user. Wanted pestware is sometimes not characterized as “pestware” or “spyware.” But, unless specified otherwise, “pestware” as used herein refers to any program that collects information about a person or an organization.
Software is available to detect and inform a user that there has been activity on their computer that may be indicative of pestware. Unfortunately, available software is often unable to discriminate between activities initiated by the user and activities carried out by pestware. As an example, currently available software is known to provide false alarms, which warn the user about activities that the user initiated. As a consequence, the user is faced with a warning, which at the very least is annoying, and worse, may lead the user to disable some or all of the warning capabilities of the software. Accordingly, current techniques and software are not always satisfactory and will most certainly not be satisfactory in the future.